Discovering the Discovery Institute

It’s been a busy week. Yesterday, when I should have been pointing you towards Danny Westneat’s excellent column in the Seattle Times on so-called “intelligent design,” I spent a few hours cramming for my confrontation with Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman on the John Carlson Show… and then the rest of the afternoon on an inspired rant about what we progressives really need to do to confront these partisan, fake-think-tanks. (Um… fight fake-fire with fake-fire.)

Anyway, Danny writes about Bob Davidson — a scientist, a doctor, and a nephrology professor at the UW medical school — and a devout Christian. He is also a former fellow at Seattle’s Discovery Institute, the driving force behind I.D.

Davidson says he was seeking a place where people “believe in a Creator and also believe in science.

“I thought it was refreshing,” he says.

Not anymore. He’s concluded the institute is an affront to both science and religion.

“When I joined I didn’t think they were about bashing evolution. It’s pseudo-science, at best … What they’re doing is instigating a conflict between science and religion.”

No doubt I was on the defensive for much of yesterday’s show; John made a point of that… he’s an good host who knows how to control the flow when it suits his purpose. And much of the push back against my critique focused on “the science”, which is funny really, because when it comes to I.D., there really isn’t any. Discovery wants schools to “teach the controversy”, but as I pointed out on the air, none exists. Evolution has pretty much been accepted science since the 1870’s, and natural selection since at least the 1940’s… and nothing has changed in the half-decade since Discovery first put forth their infamous “Wedge Document.”

Of course, I’m not a scientist, and Chapman (um… also not a scientist) made a point of emphasizing this in trying to discredit my critique, as did a couple of the callers. (Speaking of the callers… the failure of scientists to create life in the laboratory perhaps proves that scientists are not gods, not that one exists.)

But Davidson is a scientist.

“I’m kind of embarrassed that I ever got involved with this,” Davidson says.

He was shocked, he says, when he saw the Discovery Institute was calling evolution a “theory in crisis.”

“It’s laughable: There have been millions of experiments over more than a century that support evolution,” he says. “There’s always questions being asked about parts of the theory, as there are with any theory, but there’s no real scientific controversy about it.”

Davidson began to believe the institute is an “elaborate, clever marketing program” to tear down evolution for religious reasons. He read its writings on intelligent design

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The most important thing for anyone to understand about “Intelligent Design” is the source of this idea is not God, the Bible, or scientific investigation, but the clever minds of lawyers trying to get around the Supreme Court decisions prohibiting the teaching of religion in public schools.

It may be the first time in human history that lawyers invented a religion.

The Cascadia Project has come around on some issues, in How Do We Get There From Here, they were critically attacking the RTA, and going by the info they had at the time, who could bleme them. Several times in a Documentary Version that aired on the Seattle Channel in June, Light Rail was mentioned, in a positive light.

Intelligent design is anything but intelligent. A PR scheme devised by neocon lawyers to push their lopsided agenda and change the way of AMERICAN life. The deserve as much newsprint as GWB’s bowel movements

We need to fight fake-fire with truth fire. What Donaldson wrote about millions of experiments is true. The relatively new field of genetics is interesting. There are weekly articles in journals like Nature (or Nature Genetics), where real people take DNA and measure it in ways that confirm evolution.

It’s true that what measuring genetics seems to show is that God made us evolve. Whether it was ‘random’ or ‘designed’ is a question for the Pastor. Maybe soon there will be a degree in Theological Genetics where you have to do lab work. Gregor Mendel was a monk, after all.

If Intelligent Design had a legitimate bone to pick, it would just be to remove the assertions that evolutionary theory requires random events as opposed to “God’s subtle hand.”

To attack science in the name of God-science is the kind of thing we might as well encourage, though. False-facts fall in on themselves.

Hey, in related news: Did you hear that Pat Robertson apologized for not saying what he said about killing Chavez? Modus Operandi.

What the Left has to do is stick to the true facts and skewer the liars.

I just listened to yesterday’s “The Conversation” on KUOW (the joys of podcasting — thank you, science!) which was on the topic of “intelligent design”:

It’s being called the Scopes trial of our day. Late last year a rural Pennsylvania school board was the first in the nation to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design”. 11 parents sued the school district, charging that the district was bringing God into science class. Late next month the case goes to court. Intelligent design holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by an unspecified higher power. Recently, President Bush said he believes schools should discuss “intelligent design” alongside evolution when teaching the creation of life. President Bush says there is a controversy, and the controversy should be taught. But is there really a scientific controversy about evolution? Most scientists say intelligent design is junk science. In this hour of The Conversation, what’s intelligent about intelligent design?

They had on Michael Behe, who tried to make a persuasive argument that ID wasn’t really trying to contradict evolution, while his two other guests called “bullshit” on him by pointing out it’s fine if he wants to speculate, but it has nothing to do with actual science. Frankly, the whole time Behe was talking I kept thinking that host Ross Reynolds was treating him far more seriously (and respectfully) than he deserved.

As a Christian, I think it’s odd that you say lefties want only athiests to be scientists, considering how many scientific discoveries were made by men and women of faith. Nothing brings greater glory to God better that shedding light on the very nature of His Creation. I don’t need religeon to be taught in schools for me to know that God is the creator. Darwin and others are simply filling in the details.

As both a religious person and a science buff, I’ve never understood why it has to be either/or on evolution. I believe God set things in motion and has been “hands off” for the last several billion years; but I think this “intelligent design” crap is thinly-veiled fundy-speak. Darwin never dreamed that there would be such clear evidence of his theory – the DNA of a chimp is closer to mine than that of my wife, for God’s sake.

Swift boat, i sort of agree w you, but their goal largely remains to stomp out religion anywhere they can; going after tax exmpt status, any mention of God in historical monuments, prayer, christian groups, etc. This just another skirmish in their war.

There is nothing about being liberal, or not confusing science with religions that makes you an athiest. What made institutions like Yale and Harvard (I actually don’t think Stanford was relgious, but I could be wrong) great was that they didn’t confuse religion with science or politics. They knew that the secret to being a good person was to live a godly life, not too force your version of it down the throat of another.

By the way, Yale, Harvard and many of the other great schools in this country were founded by Congregationalist, the same ones that defended Sponge Bob when Focus on the Family and Dobson were showing their compassion and attacking him for being gay. http://www.ucc.org/news/r012405.htm Lets face it, a very different form of Chrisitanity than the exclusionary form practice by those at the Discovery institute.

Bill Gates has no interest in promoting education. What he wants is that people become mindless consumers and workers constrained within their occupation. He is an internationalist with more loyalty to the moneyed-class as royalty, than to this country. Does “No child left behind” promote critical thinking? NO! By promoting religious views to explain the life sciences, students are led to accept simplistic answers the same way organized religions lead parishoners to accept hierarchic decrees.

Let’s not forget why we fight so strongly over this issue. If it can be “proven” that the existence of life is random, then there is no God. That leaves government as the supreme authority accountable to no one but themselves.

But if there is a higher authority, then the power of government will always be secondary to that higher being. But if The People recognize an authority higher than government, then government’s authority is always limited. But if the the authority is unlimited, so is the power.

So those that are so arrogant as to assume that they have the intellect and charm to rule the world, (or major parts of it) will always take the side evolution and will engage in savage fights to make their own selfish case.

I agree we are headed for an engineer shortage. I are one and hire entry level engineering grads when I can find them and/or out bid the competition.

Where’s the connection between the puny number of engineers the US graduates (many of whom are foreigners on Visas and return home) and this Chapman/Robertson/Gates/Carlson conspiracy?

The college kids who did *not* graduate with engineering degrees this year were not influenced by any of this BS now were they? Perhaps there is another culprit such as our union controlled public school system causing them to not have the skills or ambition to pursue an engineering education after high school.

Zip – I are inguneer too, and there’s a correlation between decreasing numbers of engineers and increasing ratio of vaginas in universities. Engineering is a tough discipline; second only to medicine. If you have a vagina, there’s no reason to study something difficult. You can study something easier, have a good time while you’re at it, and unless you’re hideously ugly or a headlesslucy loudmouth beeeeach, you can get someone else to pay all your bills after you graduate.

“all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights”

meaning our rights are not given to us by the government, like other countries (think France)

also “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”

Americans made the government to secure the rights given by the Creator. Evolution as a theory or anything else is not a threat to our self-government. Besides, it is not rational to believe one can prove the existence of God, because belief is a matter of faith. And MY faith is deeper than any theory.

I’m not sure what is more shocking, your lack of knowledge of civics, science, or theology. But let’s try to clear them all up.

1) If life is just a random event, that doesn’t mean that there is no god, gods, or giant green rabbit, it just means your red ass isn’t the end of his/hers/their/its plans. Given your actions, I think there is no greater proof of evolution, or that it is random, than you.

2) Evolution just shows how natural laws govern life. Unless you belive that every word in the Bible is the literal truth (and how you deal with all the contradictions I’ll leave to you), then you have a problem. However, if you consider the Bible more important because it teaches good leasons, and don’t think of it as a history book, there is no conflict. And doesn’t it make more sense if God created a world that followed natural law than having to pull off magic tricks all the time just to keep an idiot like you happy?

3) The important element of American, and for that matter, modern Western Democracy is that the power derives from the people, not God or something else. Start with Rousseau, move on to Locke and Hume, and you will get a feel for it.

Heck, if you really want to understand Jefferson’s view on this all, please read the Jefferson Bible, where he took out all of the supernatural stuff.

righton @13 Actually, while a lot of fundamentalist churches have been making that claim, all of the stuff you have been talking about have been about stopping things like this.

The fact is most of the efforts to “remove religion” from anything, have been simple opposition to individuals who were attempting to either use government resources to force others to their own religion or to actually pass laws forcing others to practice their religion.

Its actually and old christian practice, thats how they spread across europe in the middle ages after all, convert the king and outlaw anyone who practices any other religions. Thats sorta why folks came here, isnt it now?

So don’t expect non-christians to just sit back and watch you try to teach christian religion in school.

Which of the millions of experiments have created life from non-life? Which experiments have created a spieces that had no prior existance? The fact is that evolution is not an experimental science, it merely documents and manipulates what has already been created.

GAry – You got ’em. Scientists are hereby stipulated to NOT be gods. Can we move on now and actually teach science in our classrooms?

By all means, if you want to actually teach philosophy, religous studies or even actually do history in the class room we can do that too, but it is a different class. Scientists are not usually well-equipped for that sort of thing anyway. Leave the religion and philosophy to the experts and out of the science classroom.

Which of the millions of experiments have created life from non-life? Which experiments have created a spieces that had no prior existance? The fact is that evolution is not an experimental science, it merely documents and manipulates what has already been created. -Comment by Gary— 8/25/05 @ 10:25 pm

A better question would have been ‘Which of the millions of experiments have created life from NOTHING?’. That would then serve to prove good ol’ Bills link as irrelevant at least and proof of the opposite of what he was trying to assert at most.

Because, good ol’ Bill, all that “stuff” your guys in the article are “creating” with had to come from somewhere – they didn’t create the DNA they’re playing with, they did not create the genes they are playing with, they didn’t create the Mycoplasma genitalium they are playing with.

Quoting your article…“At present they can only build synthetic versions of organisms that already exist”

Got that?

…“At present they can only build synthetic versions of organisms that already exist”.

While they do absolutely have the ability to “strip them down” to their most basic form, they cannot now, nor do I expect them ever, to be able to start with NOTHING and create something.

Nice try, good ol’ Bill, but again quoting your source…

“Life is just too complex to invent from scratch. Wimmer and Venter may have been able to produce the viral equivalents of fake Mona Lisas by copying every brushstroke, but they have as much chance of painting a new masterpiece as a three-year-old using potato prints. Even a virus – something so primitive that it does not earn the right to be called alive – relies on a bewildering series of hidden chemical reactions and biological interactions that are not revealed in the sparse language of its genes. Scientists can only work with what already exists.…

I believe in a hands-on God. Can’t explain why, beyond the fact I should be dead at least a dozen times over, but I’m not. Maybe that’s just a lucky series of coincidences, but it didn’t feel that way at the time.

Proudass, evolution’s not about the origin of life, as far as I know, that’s still an area of speculation. Evolution’s about how the current set of species got here once life was created.

Maybe life was created by giant space lobsters, maybe not. But once it was created, in whatever form, evolution takes over.

Interestingly enough, there is a significant body of scientific evidence, backed up by the same mathematics that back up the rest of evolutionary theory that some 60,000 years ago, the human species had dwindled to about 2,000 individuals. At that point, something (it’s not clear what) happened to to turn around people, and within 10,000 years humans had spread to all parts of the globe.

That event could concievably be the intervention of a diety, it might not, we don’t know what. But if it were, it could be the part where G_d made man “in his own image”.

Which makes ID irrelevant. Instead of focusing their energies on the public schools, the Discovery Institute should be spending its time trying to figure out what happened at those two singularity points – when/how life began, and when human beings were saved from extinction.

“If it can be ‘proven’ that the existence of life is random, then there is no God. That leaves government as the supreme authority accountable to no one but themselves.”

Mark, I can’t imagine you’ve ever been more wrong about anything in your entire life. Rightwing haters have filled your ears with shit.

Even if “the existence of life is random,” why would it follow that “there is no God”? Could not God co-exist with randomly or spontaneously created life? Logic shows me no reason why not.

But let’s assume, arguendo, there is no God. Why does that leave government as “the supreme authority”? And why, in that circumstances, would government be “accountable to no one but themselves”? All of literature and history argue against your premises. Whether there is a God or not, homo sapiens is a spirited and spiritual creature. There is no more pervasive them in all of human literature, from the unwritten and aboriginal to modern. And history is full of popular uprisings, overthrown despots, and fallen empires. Clearly, human spirit overcomes governments, not the other way around.

But what you are most wrong about — the shit you’ve been fed — is that liberals are godless people implacably opposed to religion. Perhaps atheists are attracted to liberalism because it gives them freedom to not believe; but that doesn’t change the fact that legions of liberals are attracted to God. In fact, there is little tp differentiate between liberal political principles and Christian religious principles.

You have been lied to, my friend, by people you mistakenly thought were your friends.

Here’s my engineering school story. Setting: A southern university, 1960s. I knew a girl who wanted to be an engineer, but the engineering school professors told her they would flunk her in all her classes if she didn’t withdraw, because girls weren’t allowed to become engineers. She was stubborn and enrolled anyway, and they kept her word. Realizing she was up against an entrenched system she couldn’t overcome, she switched her major to literature. If we have too many lawyers and not enough engineers, it’s because of chauvinist pigs like you. The funny thing is, a lot of those women went to law school, and now they make their living suing people with attitudes like yours.

I don’t think these figures could possibly be correct — especially not the figure for Russia.

The USA has more than twice the population of Russia, and a much higher birth rate — more than three times as many people being born in the USA than in Russia.

Only about 1.4 million people in Russia reach college age in a given year — usually 17 in the Russian system. Probably well under half ever receive the equivalent of a US bachelor’s degree — which generally requires five years of study in a Russian university. So it is highly doubtful that 10% of all Russians are going to be getting the equivalent of US bachelor engineering degrees.

If there really is a 140,000 figure being used from Russia, it is no doubt comparing apples to oranges. This may include all bachelor degrees in science, engineering and math — while the US figure only includes bachelor degrees in engineering.

Or it may include engineering certificates granted by Russian vocation-technical schools, which are in no way equivalent to US bachelor’s degrees, much less academic engineering degrees. Russians who aren’t bright enough to make the college preparatory track (which is about half of their secondary students) do not attend the last two years of high school. Instead, they enter a vocational-technical school at about age 15 and go there for three or four years or so to be trained in a trade. Many of these trades have some relation to engineer, and these vo-tech graduates might be included in the supposed number of Russian engineering degrees.

All this said, the number of Russians who actually get university bachelor degrees in engineering in a given year is probably slightly higher than the 50,000 that are awarded in the USA. Which is a much higher percentage in relation to Russia’s much smaller population (and even smaller college-age population).

Gotta laugh at Goldy’s description ; putting Danny Westneat and excellent column in the same sentence. Laughing, give me a break. Westneat is a dunce and that column was a joke (unless of course you’re part of the same propaganda team)

The Big Bang THEORY says that the Universe was created out of pure energy, no matter. I wonder how that happened? Where did all that energy come from? By the way, the Big Bang THEORY is pretty good; it predicts unknowns that when we go looking for them we find them.

Evolution says that all life on earth comes from a single source. Is it just an accident of nature that one day 3.5 to 4 billion years ago all of the amino acids that make up DNA just happened arrive at the same place at the same time and combine in just the right way? Prove it!

By the way, I don’t know much about I.D. but what I have heard of it I don’t think much of the theory. But the THEORY of Evolution has some pretty gapping holes also. As far as I know, TOE does NOT predict unknowns that when we go looking for those unknowns we find them. But I’d be glad to have someone educate me.

Closed minded fools like Roger Rabbit and Goldy need not apply.

By the way, should the THEORY of General Relativity include the cosmological constant or not?

Is Negative Energy real and does it constitute the fifth fundamental force?

And why when hydrogen fuses to helium does it release just the right amount of energy to make the heavier elements possible but not consume all of the hydrogen in the early Universe? Without hydrogen, carbon, oxygen and a smattering of heavier elements, life as we know it does NOT exist.

10% engineers in Russia wouldn’t be unexpected. In fact, that seems a bit low. Over there, parents would love to have a kid become an engineer, just like being a lawyer or doctor here. Being a good engineer offers some of the better opportunities for earning a living.

You are on track about one thing, though. The term “engineer” gets used in a broader sense there.

To JDB @ 14 I am a Liberal and think intelligent Design is bullshitt. . .but I also attended a school founded by Congregationalists. Let’s not forget they had their spasm of insanity and idiocy early on. . .gthey brought us Cotton Mather and the Salem Witch Trials. BuffaloBob

jdb: yeah, congregationalists founded some colleges and then abandoned them to secularism; evidence of their own lack of conviction

clueless; I put the seattle print media way at the bottom, WSJ at the top, NY Times too. Seattle is the worst cuz its both liberal and bad. I can stomach a touch of Frank Rich, cuz at least he’s skilled, but only a moron could like our guys/gals.

We humans are apparently doomed to destroy ourselves battling over our creation mythologies. Hey, I’m all for spirituality and for creating wonderful symbolic creation stories, I do it myself. What I can’t comprehend is anyone getting so wrapped up in their story that it becomes literal truth to them – a literal truth that they are willing to argue, fight, and die for.

News flash – ain’t none of us ever going to know how this all came to be until we’re dead and gone – if then.

The theory of evolution has predicted unknowns that have been found. Modern theory includes mechanisms of mutation, like SNP (single nucleotide polymorphism, which can be caused by beta radiation hitting DNA, as one example), repeats, deletions, and so on. Pick up a copy of Nature Genetics, you seem like the type it would convince.

What you keep inserting, and which isn’t there, is a claim that evolutionary processes are ‘random.’ What they are is ‘seemingly random’ in the same sense that quantum states are unmeasurable to us. No sane person would claim that a Diving Intender could not be the force behind these unmeasurably random events which drive evolutions.

What’s undisputable is that our genetic code evolves. As you suggest, it’s just as unassailable that there was a Big Bang and inflation of the universe. The problem with Intelligent Design is that it doesn’t look on these scientific truths as God’s Work, but they get confused and think these facts somehow argue against a creator.

Yep, you are right, and they did some other stupid things. However, their colleges always stressed the seperation between religion and academics. Hence why so many of the great schools in this country were founded as Congregationalist schools.

Question of the day for the wingnuts: Name one great fundamentalist school that blends religion with their academics.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Funding “Intelligent Design”? Intelligent Design is a theory that as far as I understand, go like this. The world and its organisms are so complex that they can’t be explained by science, so they must be the result of some supernatural (divine) influence.

Technically, it is a hypothesis, although, as has been pointed out, it is really a legal strategy. The current debate over ID is wether the Giant Green Rabbit or the Flying Spaghetti Monster are the designer.

The problem with Discovery’s involvement in transportation is that it gets all mixed up with their other weird ideology (on stem cells and “design”) – and transportation around here is already weird enough. And they are still bashing light rail – the whole video (or “film” as they like to call it) is intended to promote a badly written diatribe on transportation Bruce Chapman cobbled together years ago – promoting a hodge podge of Seattle-centric ideas that have mostly been debunked long ago. Free Cascadia from Mr. Chapman and the Discovery Institute! Tell Gates to fund Cascadia directly without the overhead of Mr. Chapman and the stain of his bizarre ID public relations campaign.

Regarding the number of Russian Engineering Graduates, the number can be aisily confirmed by a quick Google search leading to http://www.auriga.com/auriga_presents.html which confirms the 140,000 number and actually states that the number of graduates in Engineering and related fields was 211,000 in 2004. And references their sources!

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